Marriage and Divorce - A Social Intelligence Issue

Kalpana: (In an ironic and mocking tone) “Did you prepare the breakfast.” Make up your own damn breakfast. What do you think of me,

a house maid? I earn more than you.

Aditya: If you were a maid, at least you did know how to prepare a proper breakfast.

These dialogues are not from a TV serial which would have proved amusing in that case. But these are the bitter and sarcastic dialogues between husband and wife who were divorced after few years. John Gottman, a psychologist at University of Washington conducted an exhaustive and detailed analysis of the loving adhesive that binds the couples together and the bitter acrimony that separates them leading to divorces. The role of emotional intelligence has been convincingly emphasized. He tracked more than 200 couples and drew an emotional ecology of marriage with such precision that he was able to predict that which couples will divorce within three years with 94 percent accuracy.

An early warning signal in marriage is harsh criticism. In a healthy marriage, husband and wife feel free to voice a complaint.

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But in heated moments of anger, complaints are expressed in negative and destructive manner which involves character assassination of the person and not the deed. The difference between personal complaint and personal criticism is very simple. In a complaint, a wife may explain unambiguously what action is upsetting her, and criticizes her husband’s action, not her husband, complaining what had upset her: “When you kept me waiting at the dinner party, it made me feel that you don’t care me”. It is an expression of emotional intelligence. An emotionally intelligent husband can explain logically that he was struck up in traffic jam and got delayed. But in emotionally charged atmosphere inclined for doing personal criticism, she may use this opportunity of personal grievance for a global attack on her husband: “You are always so selfish and uncaring. It just proves that I can’t trust you to do anything right. Take example of our neighbor; How her husband takes care of her. It is my misfortune that I was trapped into marrying you enticed by your sweet talks. In fact, I was getting lot of better proposals.” This kind of criticism leads to leaves the person on receiving end feeling ashamed, disliked, blamed and defective – all of which leads to defensive reaction than to take steps to improve things. Contempt comes very easily with anger and it is expressed with verbal abuse, angry expression and aggressive reaction.

Men and women, in general, require different solutions for their emotional fine-tuning. If a wife complaints, man should not sidestep the conflict or ignore it by running away from situation, but to realize that when his wife brings up some grievance, she may be doing it as an act of love, trying to keep relationship healthy and on course (although it may not be true for some sadistic females). Men should also guard against terminating the solution by giving quick-fix practical solution – as wife feels important that her husband hears her complaint and empathizes with her feelings about the matter (even he may not agree with her). She may get insulted by his ice cold approach and hear his practical advice as dismissing her feelings as petty or inconsequential. For wives, the advice may be slightly different. The major problem for men is that their wives are too intense in voicing their complaints, they should make purposeful effort to be careful not to character assassinate their husbands but to complain about what they did – a clear statement on the particular action that is distressing.

The best strategy to work out a successful run of marriage is not to concentrate on specific issues but rather to cultivate a couple’s shared intelligence, thereby improving chances of devising a solution. A handful of emotional competences like – calming down yourself (as well as your partner), sense of empathy, and listening well – can help in working out the disagreements effectively.

The rate of divorces in society is increasing and is more shifting towards the newlyweds. Take example of United States where divorce rates was 10% in 1890, 50 % in 1970s, 67% in 1990s and reaching to 70% in last decade. One may argue that increase in divorce rate is not much due to decrease in social intelligence but due to gradual erosion of social pressure – the social stigma surrounding divorce, the economic dependence of wives on their husbands. Thus if the glue of social pressure is gradually declining then emotional forces between the couple become more crucial for the survival of their marriage. The latest breakthrough in understanding the emotional factors that make or break the marriages has come through study of physiological measures that allow continuous monitoring the emotional ups and downs of couple’s interactions. The latest advances in physiological monitoring can detect invisible adrenaline surges, blood pressure, galvanic skin response rate of husband and wife’s fleeting but telling microemotions across her face. These physiological measures reveal the hidden biological subtext to couple’s difficulties, a critical level of emotional reality that is not typically perceptible to or disregarded by couple themselves. One of the major reasons lies in the differences between the emotional perceptions in the worlds of girls and boys right from childhood which may be partly by nature and partly by nurture.

Couples can develop rigid patterns of interaction based on powerful emotional experiences that hinder emotional engagement and trust. Emotional focused therapy aims to enhance empathic capabilities of family members by exploring deep-seated habits and modifying emotional cues. Sue Johnson had done lot of work on emotional focused therapy. Various studies on adult attachment that have emerged over the last decade tell us that the essence of love is not a negotiated exchange of resources (so why teach negotiation skills?), a friendship, Nature's trick to get you to mate and pass on your genes, or a time-limited episode of delusional addiction.

Love is a very special kind of emotional bond, the need for which is wired into our brain by millions of years of evolution. It is a survival imperative. The human brain codes isolation and abandonment as danger and the touch and emotional responsiveness of loved ones as safety, a safety that promotes optimal flexibility and continual learning.Jaak Panksepp, in his neurobiological studies, finds that loss of connection from attachment figures triggers "primal panic," a special set of fear responses. As Bowlby notes, the words "anxiety" and "anger" come from the same etymological root and both arise at moments of disconnection, when attachment figures are non-responsive. This need for emotional connection is not a sentimental notion. The basic image of who we are and what our most basic needs are, namely that we are social animals who seek such connection, is reflected in health studies. For example, it is now clear that emotional isolation is more dangerous for your health than smoking, and that it doubles the likelihood of heart attack and stroke.

Attachment theory tells us that emotion and emotional signals are the music of the dance between intimates. Many therapies encourage clients to go round strong emotion or replace it with rational thoughts or decisions. Emotion researchers such as James Gross now tell us that this not only increases arousal in the person who is inhibiting emotion but also creates tension in the other partner. An approach that focuses on attachment suggests that emotion is best acknowledged and listened to, so that emotional signals can be shaped in ways that make for safe connection. New emotional responses are also essential if therapy is to address each partner's deeper longings, help partners formulate their needs and offer a path to the kind of compassionate loving connection that couples are seeking. Secure attachment, not just conflict containment, is the goal of couples therapy here.

In cognitive behavioral aspect, problems are the result ofoperant conditioningthat reinforces negative behaviors within the family’s interpersonal social exchanges that extinguish desired behavior and promote incentives toward unwanted behaviors. This can lead to irrational beliefs and a faulty family schema. Systematic desensitizationis a type ofbehavioral therapy with the couples to help effectively overcomeirrational beliefsand otheranxiety disorders. To begin the process of systematic desensitization, one must first be taught relaxation skills in order to extinguish fear andanxietyresponses to specific matrimonial problems. Once the individual has been taught these skills, he or she must use them to react towards and overcome situations in an establishedhierarchy.

o- f negative reactions. The goal of this process is that an individual will learn to cope and overcome the problems in each step of the hierarchy, which will lead to overcoming the last step of the anxiety/fear in the hierarchy. Systematic desensitization is sometimes calledgraduated exposure therapy.

Specific negative attitudes are one class of mental blocksoften treated through thebehavior therapyorcognitive-behavio- ralprocess of systematic desensitization. When individuals possess irrational anxieties or fears about his or her spouse, they tend to avoid it. Since escaping from situations reduces their anxiety, their behavior to reduce fear is reinforced through negative reinforcement, a concept defined inoperant conditioning. The goal of Systematic Desensitization is to overcome this avoidance pattern by gradually exposing them to the fearful situation until it can be tolerated. In classical and operant conditioning terms the elicitation of the fear response is extinguished to the stimulus. Relaxation training, such asmeditation, is one type of coping strategy. Couples who have serious anxiety that leads to breathing problems might be taught to focus on their breathing like Pranayam exercises or to think about happy situations. Another means of relaxation is cognitive reappraisal of imagined outcomes. Such measures have been found to reduce anxieties to great extents.

The communication approach to marriage problems occurs due to communication problems between the married couples. This approach to the matrimonial problem was advocated by Virginia Satir. She says that all people are born into a primary survival triad between themselves and their parents where they adopt survival stances to protect their self-worth from threats communicated by words and behaviors of their family members. Experiential therapists are interested in altering the overt and covert messages between the couples that effect their body, mind and feelings in order to promote congruence and to validate each person’s inherent self-worth.

Families are built upon an unconscious network of implicit loyalties between parents and children that can be damaged when these “relational ethics” of fairness, trust, entitlement, mutuality and merit are breached. This contextual basis was advocated by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, who developed a comprehensive model for resolving matrimonial problems which integrates individual, psychologocal, interpersonal, existential, systemic, andintergenerationaldimens- ions of individual andfamilylife and development.

The contextual model proposesrelational ethics- theethicalor "justice" dimension of close relationships - as an overarching integrative conceptual and methodological principle. Relational ethics focuses in particular on the nature and roles of connectedness, caring, reciprocity, loyalty,legacy,guilt,fai- rness,accountability, and trustworthiness andtrustworthiness- within and betweengenerations. It is taken to represent not just a set of prescriptivenorms, nor simplypsychologicalphenome- na,perspectives, orconstructions. Rather, relational ethics is seen as (1) having some objectiveontologicalande- xperientialbasis by virtue of being derived frombasicneedsand from realrelationshipswith concrete consequences (i.e., as distinct from abstractor"value" ethics); and (2) as being significantexplanatoryand- motivationaldynamics operating - in both beneficial and destructive ways - in individuals, families,social groups, and broadersociety.

One of the theories has originated from feminist moment from the west. It advocates that complications from social disparity between genders are identified as underlying causes of conflict within a family system. Therapists are encouraged to be aware of these influences in order to avoid perpetuating hidden oppression, biases and cultural stereotypes and to model an egalitarian perspective of healthy family relationships. Feministtherapy contends that women are in a disadvantaged position in the world due to sex, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, age and other categories.Feminist therapists argue that many problems that arise in therapy are due to disempowering social forces; thus the goal of therapy is to recognize these forces and empower the client.In a feminist therapy setting the therapist and client work as equals. The therapist must demystify therapy from the beginning to show the client that she is her own rescuer, and the expectations, roles, and responsibilities of both client and therapist must be explored and equally agreed upon.The therapist recognizes that with every symptom a client has, there is strength. This approach has been criticized that feminist therapy embraces and promotes a number of inaccurate and discrediteda prioriassumptions, such as the belief that men are responsible for initiating, perpetrating and perpetuating most interpersonal violence.

One of the reasons of emotional difference between man and woman, while they may be partly heredity based, also can be attributed to environmental conditions developed right from their childhood, and to the separate environmental worlds boys and girl reside while growing up. In Indian society, boys and girls are taught to handle emotions in very different ways. Mothers talk to their girls more about emotions – with the exception of anger – than their sons. They discuss about feelings and emotional states in detail to their daughters and with boys they discuss more about effects of emotions like anger. Thus girls develop language communication faster and are more skilled than boys in articulating their feelings while boys may become largely unconscious of their emotional states, both in themselves and others. At age of ten, boys and girls behave in similar manner like open confrontation on being angered. But by age of thirteen, the difference starts developing in them. Girls become more experts in indirect aggressive tactics like indirect criticism, ostracism, vicious gossip and indirect vendettas. Boys are unable to articulate their feeling and are open to direct confrontation when angered.

This difference can be noticed in the games being played by them. Girls prefer small, intimate groups with extended cooperation and minimum acrimony or hostility, while boys prefer larger groups and emphasize on competition. If a boy gets slightly hurt or upset, he is required to get out of the way so that game can continue. In case of girls paying a game, the game will stop and everyone will group around the girl to help her. This difference as per Harvard’s Carol Gilligins is the key disparity leading to difference in their personality with age; boys prefer lone, tough-minded independence and autonomy, while girls prefer being a part of networking. Boys gets threatened by challenge to their independence while girls are more sensitive to break in their relationships. Thus in short, it can be concluded that women are more emotional than men and experience the entire range of emotions with greater intensity and volatility than men.

It has been found that women are more equipped for role of emotional manager while men are less equipped on this front. One of the important factors for the women for successful marriage is “Good Communication” which is not on priority list of men. Ted Huston, psychologist in University of Texas observes, “For the wives, intimacy means talking things over, especially talking about the relationship over. The men, by and large do not understand what wives want from them. They say, “I want to do things with her but all she wants to do is talk.” He found that during courtship or in early years of marriage, men were willing to listen to their wives caring for her wishes but later on started becoming less communicative. They preferred to spend time in gardening than sharing thoughts with their life partners. Now time constraint due to high pressure jobs, anxiety and tension in professional circles, egoistic attitudes is further vitiating the matrimonial harmony.

Men seem to be less articulate than women about their state of marriage as women are more aware of the troubled spots. Due to this reason, men had a more positive and rosier view in everything about their relationships than their wives – finances, relation with in-laws, communication with each other, loving each other, their flaws. The slowness of men to bring up relationship problems and relative lack of skill to read facial expressions of women is one of the causative factors in good communication. Off course, exceptions are there and everything cannot be generalized. Thus, it is not the specific issues like how often the couple should have sex, how to educate or discipline the children, what financial planning is required, are not what make or break the marriage. It is how the couple discusses these issues in spite of their innate gender differences. Simple having reached an agreement about how to disagree is key to marital survival. Failing this, couple are more vulnerable to break in their relationship. These differences are more likely to develop if one of the partners has less social intelligence. It is an encouraging fact that recent researches have proved that social intelligence can be acquired by training and spiritualism has a lot of role to play in this.